Friday, May 5, 2017

154. Of our studies } impossible to speak.

W. Scott Poole speculates in his book about H.P.
Lovecraft In The Mountains of Madness (sent to me by the publisher, Soft Skull Press)
that “the classic stories ‘The Call of Cthulu,’ ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth,’
‘The Haunter of the Dark,’ and ‘The Colour Out of Space’… will not be the horrific
things baristas and bartenders of the next generation… will want to talk about
with middle-aged patrons pondering over Lovecraft books….” He proposes that
“more readers will begin to discover the haunting vision quests [Lovecraft]
wrote between 1918 and 1923.”

After Poole identifies the “haunting vision
quests” he means (“Celephais,” “Polaris,” “The Quest of Iranon,” “The Doom that
Came to Sarnath” “The Nameless City,” and “Hypnos”), he writes, “I wonder, and
worry, that ‘Hypnos’ might even become a standard college reading for the hip
classroom.”

Why worry? He explains:

If this occurs, maybe the idea of “Hypnos” being
on a college syllabus will acquire the same outré patina as reading Naked Lunch
in the 1970s, or seem as exciting as Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow
Wallpaper” in the 1990s. Maybe its reputation will say to future college
students what it says to them today when they read a David Foster Wallace essay
or check out one of Chuck Klosterman’s more incisive and less opaque essays. An
adult who “gets you” has given you this VERY RELEVANT work that will change
your life and open the gates of perception.

I say I worry as well as wonder about this because
canonizing means domesticating and containing the power of such texts and their
histories.

Oh my. Where to begin? Poole is a college
professor (see his faculty page here). As a professor, he can’t really believe
that canonization = domestication. If he does, he’s failed to understand that
there’s a difference between the belief that you know a work and actually
knowing a work. A work may seem domesticated because it’s well-known, but when
readers cast aside what they think they know and pay attention, that perception
dies.

A student might assume a canonized work is by
definition stale. That’s why you put a professor in the room—because the
professor knows otherwise.

Canonization does nothing to the power of a great
text.

And to what canon does Poole refer? The imaginary
canon that includes Burroughs, Gilman, Wallace, and Klosterman? Maybe he means
a more conventional canon? Say, the Norton Anthology of American Literature? Is
there a poem or an essay or a novel in the Norton Anthology of American
Literature that’s domesticated and contained? And if you think so, ask
yourself: when did you last pay attention to that work?

Poole adds (specifically regarding “Hypnos”),
“It’s a tale that deserves something better than such a fate. Hopefully, to
quote Stephen King writing about Lovecraft, ‘the chickenshit academics’ won’t
get their tenured mitts on this one.” It’s easy to understand why King might
bear animus toward academics, but why does Poole? He is an academic. To what
end does Poole perpetuate trite clichés about intellectually timid professors? Is
this a manifestation of self-hatred?

...when New Genre was started, we talked a lot about literary canons and what's in and out, since we were concerned with where genre fiction fell. In the States, horror has always had a place--Brown, Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, etc. There are other literary canons--within genres. Since sf, an American invention, has been out of THE canon, it established its own, pulling into it "proto" sf from THE canon--Orwell, Verne--and identifying its own masters. In horror, for instance, Lovecraft has been canonical since Derleth started his Arkham House; now, Lovecraft is in the Norton. You and I are clearly in very special, limited canons. I'm pretty sure my mom considers my work to be canonical.